Heliogenic Climate Change

“The simmering conflict between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Texas officials over air quality requirements has reached the boiling point with EPA seizing control of a key permit governing the Lone Star State’s fifth-largest refinery.

In what could lead to further escalation of the row, a high-level EPA official has threatened to strip Texas of its power to issue such permits, unless the government in Austin bows to Washington’s regulatory demands.

Attention is currently focused on the Flint Hills Resources East Corpus Christi refinery. EPA says the refinery operates under a permit issued by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) that violates the Clean Air Act.

In a May 25 letter to Flint Hills Resources, which is owned by Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries, EPA said the company must submit a permit application to the Washington agency by September 15 or face potential fines. More ominously, the agency threatened to take similar action on more than three dozen other facilities in Texas, most along the Gulf coast where the state’s oil and gas industries are located.

The bone of contention between EPA and TCEQ is Texas’ decade-and-a-half-old practice of issuing “flexible” permits to refineries. Flexible permits place limits on emissions from an entire refinery. EPA claims emissions permits are required for each of the dozens of production units within a refinery. It is not known which of the two systems results in lower emissions, but the route preferred by EPA would undoubtedly lead to more paperwork.  …

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) blasted EPA’s move.

“The Obama administration has taken yet another step in its campaign to harm our economy and impose federal control over Texas,” he said in a press statement. “With their decision to take control of a permitting process that the Clean Air Act allows to be delegated to the states, the EPA is on the verge of killing thousands of Texas jobs and derailing a program that has cleaned Texas’ air.”  …

John Dunn, M.D., a Texas-based emergency services consultant, says there is more to the fight over air quality than meets the eye. He points out Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot is one of several state attorneys general suing EPA over the agency’s plan to regulate manmade greenhouse gases. According to Dunn, EPA may be seeking payback in its recent focus on Texas air quality.

EPA, Dunn says, has declared Texas a “rogue state” as part of a strategy to “intimidate states into submission.””  “EPA and, Texas Clash Over Air Quality Permits“

“Canada’s oil sands will become the largest single source of imported oil to the United States this year, and could supply more than a third of America’s foreign oil by 2030, under an aggressive growth scenario that would have to overcome labour shortages and environmental concerns, an influential U.S. think tank said Wednesday.

The growing volume of Canadian oil sands imports “emphasizes the importance they have attained as a supply source for the United States,” Daniel Yergin, Cambridge, Mass.-based chairman of energy research firm IHS CERA, said in releasing a new report on the controversial Alberta oil projects.

Canada is already the largest source of imports for the U.S. market. But as conventional Canadian production declines and oil sands volumes grow, those non-conventional supplies are becoming increasingly critical.

In the third quarter of 2009, oil sands imports to the United States hit one million barrels a day for the first time, of total Canadian exports of 1.9 million. This year, IHS CERA expects oil sands producers to average 1.08 million barrels a day in sales to the U.S., eclipsing imports from both Mexico and Saudi Arabia, which will be declining or flat.

In the report, IHS CERA director Jackie Forrest projects production in the oil sands will grow from 1.35 million barrels a day last year, to as many as 5.7 million barrels a day by 2030 – a figure that would represent 36 per cent of anticipated American imports.  …

The IHS CERA report comes as environmental groups continue their campaign against the oil sands. Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council argued in a report released Wednesday that the development of Alberta’s “tar sands” represents … a “global disaster” because it will “all but guarantee the failure of efforts to combat global warming.”  …

The U.S. State Department has approved pipeline expansion from the oil sands into the U.S. market, saying the Alberta source was critical to U.S. energy security and its efforts to reduce dependence on Middle East oil, Mr. Pumphrey noted. However, the administration also backs climate change legislation that could impose significant additional costs on refiners that process heavy-oil imports which produce more emissions when processed.”  “Oil sands on track to be biggest source of U.S. oil imports“

“President Barack Obama today issued a memorandum directing federal agencies to develop tougher new fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks beginning in the 2017 model year and to develop fuel economy standards for medium and big trucks for the first time. This follows the new standards announced in April that will begin with the 2012 model year.  It’s not clear to me that consumers are going to want to buy the models that the Congress and the Obama Administration have decreed will be offered in 2012, but the automakers are now resigned to taking orders from their federal masters rather than their customers. My prediction is that another massive bailout of the automakers is inevitable.”  “Obama Wants To Raise CAFE Again”  Cooler Heads Digest 21 May.

“A federal judge has struck a blow for California’s water-deprived Central Valley, ruling that draconian federal water cutbacks violate human rights because — surprise! — people also belong in the ecosystem.  …

Based on a judicial ruling [in lawsuits brought by enviros], some of the most prized and productive agricultural land in the country was turned into a wasteland after its water was shut off.

The ruling was derived from an 800-page “biological opinion” put out by regulators enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act, ostensibly to protect a finger-sized fish called the delta smelt and some other wildlife. Regulators complained that smelt were getting ground up in pumping stations that brought river water from California’s north to its south, so the water had to stop.

Even the judge was appalled at being forced into the ruling but had no choice, given the law, and tried to cushion the impact.

Tuesday, that same judge, District Judge Oliver Wanger declared to federal regulators that they must consider the impact of their “draconian” actions on human communities, something they’ve never done up until now.

“Federal defendants completely abdicated their responsibility to consider alternative remedies,” Wanger wrote.

He also ripped into the environmental regulators for their junk science “guesstimates,” stating that their shut-off “lacked factual and scientific justification, while effectively ignoring the irreparable harm (their regulations) have inflicted on humans and the human environment,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.  …

It can’t happen too soon. The water shut-off has been a nightmare for California. Huge farms growing the world’s finest grapes, peaches, almonds, pistachios, plums and walnuts — as well as cotton, carrots, cantaloupe and the other lush truck crops that come out of California’s temperate weather and rich soil — have gone fallow.  …

But the worst part of these decisions is the high human cost. California’s communities have suffered terrible disruption, with unemployment as high as 45% in some towns and farm workers forced to stand in food lines for bags of Chinese-grown carrots near fields they once harvested.  …

Judge Wanger is a hero for ruling that federal water regulators must consider the impact of their rulings on human communities along with the fish they seek to protect. Americans’ rights have been trampled by out-of-control environmentalism, which at times seems to grant more rights to fish and other creatures than humans.

No community should have to bear the entire brunt of a man-made water shortage because of heartless, ignorant bureaucrats.

The judge’s ruling has restored some sanity into what has up until now been an atrocious out-of-control bureaucracy.”  “Water Sanity For Central California“

This is truly ironic.  Tens of thousands of farm workers are out of work in California’s devastated central valley because enviros sued the feds to force stopping the pumping of irrigation water from the delta, supposedly because the delta smelt needed more water to survive.  Now it turns out the problem for the smelt was not too little water but pollution from wastewater treatment plants.  Tell it to the devastated farmlands and farm workers:

“A new study to be published in the academic journal Reviews in Fisheries Science recommends that efforts to restore the endangered California delta smelt and other declining pelagic fish should more sharply focus on reducing nutrient pollution to the species’ native waters. The research indicates these fish populations would greatly benefit from reductions in the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta from wastewater treatment plants and balancing the ratio of nitrogen and phosphorus contained in the discharged water.

“While a great deal of emphasis has been placed on ensuring there is enough water for delta smelt, we also need to recognize that the water also has to have the right chemical balance,” said Dr. Patricia Glibert of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “The research shows us that reducing the amount of nitrogen from Bay-Delta wastewater treatment plants should aid the recovery of the delta smelt population. The high nutrient loads are affecting the algae at the base of the food web, which in turn, affect the food supply for the fish. This has altered the ecology of the system over many years.”

For her research, Dr. Glibert analyzed 30 years of water chemistry, river flow, plankton, fish population and effluent discharge data to determine possible linkages to the population of the delta smelt and other pelagic fish in the Bay-Delta system. The analysis reveals that declines in delta smelt population most closely coincide with effluent changes from the region’s major wastewater treatment plant.  …

The Bay-Delta is the subject of considerable national public awareness due to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic tension surrounding the plight of the endangered delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) and the court-ordered modifications of water diversion projects to protect the species.”  “New research links decline of endangered California delta smelt to nutrient pollution“

“So about two weeks ago Sen. John Kerry, a lead author of the looming Kerry-Graham-Lieberman global warming/cap-and-trade legislation said about his bill, to disassociate from Earth Day loopiness: This is not an environment bill.

No kidding. No one on the planet claims it would change the climate in any way our most sophisticated instrumentation could discern. It’s about power.  …

Today we read in E&E Daily, from another co-sponsor Sen. Lindsey Graham: “It’s not a global warming bill to me. Because global warming as a reason to pass legislation doesn’t exist anymore. ”

Oddly, both remarkable statements have been ignored by the establishment press, slavish as they are to also seeing this agenda through to the end because, as Sen. Tim Wirth said in 1988 and Barack Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address, even if you don’t buy the excuse, their agenda is still “the right thing to do.”

[T]he issue is not the issue. The global warming then climate change then, uh, it’s jobs, that’s it, jobs, or maybe national security or…I dunno, what appeals to you? … agenda for promoting the energy-scarcity list of mandates, wealth transfers and lifestyle restrictions were just excuses for doing what these people have long insisted they, as your betters, be able to do to you.”  “Global warming:  the issue is not the issue“

Windmills kill tens of thousands of birds every year.  Journos yawn.  But if oil spills they go ballistic:

“What does it say when 11 men who perish on an exploding oil platform, or 30 poor souls who die in a 1,000-year Tennessee flood, get less coverage than two oil-soaked birds? It says news is driven from the left.

It is to the credit of the one media outlet that reported the paparazzi-like scrums of reporters trailing rescue workers as they tried to clean off one oil-soaked gannet caught in the oil spill off Louisiana waters after a rig exploded in the Gulf on April 20. Not only did the U.S. and European media obsess breathlessly about the bird, and later about a brown pelican that followed, they seemed to be panting for more.

That’s because birds are convenient tools for driving the radical green agenda to halt all oil drilling. TV media and the national papers pounded the bird story because it served a political purpose.  …

A look at the Los Angeles Times’ oil spill coverage, for one, shows birds featured daily in its blog and paper while the 11 oil platform workers have barely registered. On the blog, the news of the deaths wasn’t acknowledged until May 5, eight days after the workers’ employer identified them in a memorial Web site.”  “Meanwhile, In Nashville“

They oppose new dams, new reservoirs, new canals, pumping from the ground, pumping from rivers, and now, with a government-imposed water shortage caused by enviro lawsuits, enviros oppose a desalination plant:

“The Surfrider Foundation has filed a lawsuit against the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, challenging a permit that allows Poseidon Resources to withdraw 300 million gallons of seawater a day for the state’s first large seawater desalination plant.  …

In March, the State Water Resources Control Board for the third time dismissed an appeal of Poseidon’s permit filed by Surfrider Foundation and San Diego Coastkeeper.  …

In denying the appeal, the State Board upheld the Regional’s Board’s determination that the Carlsbad Desalination Project is in compliance with California Water Code by “utilizing the best available site, design, technology, and mitigation measures feasible to minimize the intake and mortality of all forms of marine life.”  …

“Poseidon Resources is pleased the State Board has denied yet another politically-motivated attempt to stop seawater desalination from becoming a part of California’s drinking water supply,” said Poseidon Resources’ Vice President Scott Maloni in March.

“After spending the better part of the past decade successfully permitting the state’s first large-scale seawater desalination plant, construction of the Carlsbad project has started and the inevitable completion of the plant cannot be derailed by opponents of seawater desalination,” said Maloni.

Phase I of Poseidon construction started in November 2009. Maloni says that during the construction and start up, the project will create 2,100 jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic stimulus. The facility is scheduled to start operating in 2012.

The $320 million seawater desalination plant is expected to produce 50 million gallons of drinking water a day, about 10 percent of the water San Diego County needs.

Drinking water has been in short supply and water restrictions are a fact of life for San Diego’s growing population, located in dry southernmost California.

The Carlsbad desalination project will provide a locally-controlled, drought-proof supply of high-quality water that meets or exceeds all state and federal drinking water standards, developed at no expense to the region’s taxpayers, Poseidon says.  …

The ruling in this Surfrider lawsuit could have importance beyond the Poseidon desalination facility planned for Carlsbad. There are approximately 20 desalination facilities proposed for California.”  “Surfrider Sues to Protect Fish from California’s First Big Desalination Plant“

Obama’s transportation secretary is seriously out of touch with the American people.  Americans don’t want more “bicycle lanes, walking paths, and transit”.  They want more roads and more lanes on existing roads:

“Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said Friday that Americans are “tired” of motorized transportation and its attendant hassles, and instead are looking for other options such as bicycle lanes and walking paths, which the government will add to its infrastructure.

“People are sick of being stuck in traffic, stuck in their automobiles, and we want to help communities and neighborhoods that want more walking paths or biking paths—more transit,” LaHood told CNSNews.com.”  “Americans Sick and Tired of Motorized Transportation, Transportation Secretary Says”

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“From Sonoma to San Jose, the Bay Area’s 28 mass transit systems are bleeding money and riders at a rate that will require a projected bailout of about $1 billion a year for the next 25 years, according to a new report by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

Ballooning costs, coupled with a shrinking ridership and vanishing tax revenue, have led to a vicious circle of fare hikes and service cuts that chase away even more patrons – and lead to more deficits.

“It is a road to ruin,” said the transportation commission’s executive director, Steve Heminger.”  “Costs put transit agencies on ‘road to ruin’“

We’ll find out in November whether enough voters in über-liberal California have been deprogrammed from the carbon cult:

“Leaders of a drive to suspend California’s … greenhouse gas emissions law claim they will submit enough voter signatures Monday to place the issue before voters.

The California Jobs Initiative Campaign will submit more than the required 435,000 voter signatures to qualify for the November ballot, spokeswoman Anita Mangels said.

“We’re headed to the ballot,” she said.

The campaign targets Assembly Bill 32, pushed four years ago by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders to require California to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

The proposed initiative would suspend AB 32 until the state’s unemployment level drops to 5.5 percent for at least a year.  …

“Voters have a right to have a say in whether the the state is going to risk a million jobs, or more, and to spend billions of dollars on programs that will not have any impact on global warming,” Mangels said.”  “Drive to Suspend AB32 will submit voter signatures Monday“  h/t NC Media Watch

“It has been three years since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 549 U.S. 497 (2007).  But the significance of this case requires that it be exposed and discussed.  The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in this case that the EPA “abdicated its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to regulate the emissions of four greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide.”  In this case the Supreme Court sided with speculation over scientific evidence, as it endorsed the man-made global warming fanatics, whose purposes attack America’s economic strength based upon unsupported speculation.

This is a ruling of profound significance for America.  The Supreme Court by a slim majority leaped forward to conclude that man-made C02 emissions (a) cause global warming, (b) are increasing too rapidly, and (c) that America will suffer catastrophic damages if the EPA does not do something to stop these increases.  The problems with the Massachusetts v. EPA opinion are fundamental and far-reaching.  This opinion stands with Lawrence v. Texas and Boumediene v. Bush as examples of a slim majority of five Justices who abandoned established constitutional principles and echoed politically popular themes to reach a pre-determined result.   The legal processes and analysis of the majority represents a departure from intellectual honesty and disciplined analysis, and stands as a blatant example of judicial activism.”  Continue reading here:  “Supreme Court “Global Warming” Ruling — A Monument to Bad Science and Judicial Activism“

High energy costs (caused by “green” laws), high taxes, and onerous enviro and labor regulations have driven GM-Toyota out of California (prior posts here).  Many other businesses have done and will do likewise.  Greenies say California is a model for the nation.  If so, the nation is in deep trouble:

“The last car has rolled off the production lines at California’s sole auto plant.

Workers are trickling out of the New United Motor Manufacturing [Inc.] [NUMMI] plant in Fremont as they complete their tasks and the plant readies to shut down.

Nearby, job centers have been set up to help the newly unemployed figure out benefits, retraining and other options.

The plant made Toyota Tacoma trucks and Corolla sedans. The last Tacoma rolled off the assembly lines last week, and Corolla production ended Thursday.

The plant began 25 years ago as a joint venture between Toyota Motor Corp. and General Motors Co. GM pulled out last year, and Toyota later announced it would halt production, eliminating about 4,700 jobs.”  “California’s last auto plant shuts its doors“

“• President Obama did not open new lands to offshore drilling – all of these areas were already open for drilling once Congress and President Bush lifted the moratorium in 2008. Instead, President Obama yesterday announced what areas he would CLOSE to offshore drilling (see maps below).

• Under the President’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) plan, over 360 million acres are now under a new “Obama Moratorium” that blocks American energy production. This represents nearly 60% of the OCS in the Lower 48 States.

• In total, the new Obama OCS plan puts 13.14 billion barrels of oil and 41.49 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under lock and key.

• The plan includes only two actual lease sales – Virginia and Cook Inlet –both are delayed from 2011 to 2012.

• The Administration will only study the other areas (Mid-Atlantic, Southern Atlantic, Chukchi and Beaufort Sea). It has NOT actually planned lease sales for these areas. There is no guarantee that drilling will ever occur there.

• Drilling in a small portion of the Eastern Gulf of Mexico can only happen if Congress lifts the ban that is in place until 2022. The Administration has not sent proposed language to make this change to Congress yet.

• The entire Pacific Coast is now off limits. The Pacific Coast alone holds an estimated 10.5 billion barrels of oil—almost 75 percent of the total amount available off the U.S. coastline in former moratoria areas – and 18 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

• The Eastern Gulf of Mexico mileage restrictions specifically exclude the “Destin Dome” area. This area contains enough natural gas to supply gas to a million American families for 30 years. It is located close to infrastructure and could be quickly developed, creating jobs and wealth for the American people.”  “Facts & Maps on Obama Administration’s Plan to Lock Up the OCS“

“President Barack Obama’s overbearing EPA is holding hostage thousands of coal-mining jobs in Appalachia in order to protect an insect that lives for a day.

The EPA claims that trading jobs for bugs is part of its proper oversight role, but the evidence suggests that politics are at play. Environmentalists are a very important voting bloc for the Democratic Party, and they earnestly believe that coal is evil, despite the fact that it generates half of the country’s electricity. That’s why President Obama promised, while campaigning for the Oval Office, to “bankrupt” the coal industry. He has since unleashed the EPA to fulfill that promise.  …

It started in June, when the EPA announced that it would use its veto powers under the Clean Water Act to hold up the permitting process for surface coal mining in the steep terrain of the Appalachian Mountains. This is the first time that the EPA has used these powers since the act was passed by Congress in 1970. Also, the EPA has waged a letter-writing campaign to state environmental officials warning them that their standard for water quality is insufficiently onerous for surface coal mining operations. Thus, the EPA has held up 79 permits.

These regulatory intrusions are unprecedented, so the EPA must have a good reason, right?

Wrong. In fact, the EPA is intervening on behalf of a bug.

Recent EPA research suggests that discharge from “fills” — piles of dirt and rock moved in the process of mining coal — hurts populations of mayflies, an insect that typically lives for less than a day. Other research suggests that populations of hardier insect species grow in the wake of the mayfly’s decline, but this doesn’t deter the EPA.

During testimony before the Senate last summer, John Pomponio, an EPA official with jurisdiction over surface-coal-mining permitting in Appalachia, said that it is “critical that EPA re-invigorate its oversight role” in light of the mayfly study.

In practice, a “re-invigorated oversight role” means that President Obama’s EPA has outlawed surface mining practices that had been acceptable for decades. In this business environment — beholden to capricious and arbitrary EPA rules — coal-mining companies can’t raise capital. After all, you can’t mine without a permit.  …

In the short term, people are losing their jobs.

There are more than 60,000 coal miners in Appalachia. Just this month, Consol Energy announced that it would lay off 500 workers at a West Virginia mine idled by the EPA’s actions. As such, antipathy for the EPA runs deep in coal country. Rallies this summer in West Virginia and Kentucky drew scores of thousands of miners and their families.

In the long term, electricity consumers are the big losers. Appalachian coal provides inexpensive fuel for power plants along the Ohio River. It’s the reason that Mid-Atlantic states have some of the cheapest electricity rates in the country.”  “Obama’s EPA Delivers a Lump of Coal to Appalachia“

“A highly anticipated study of water diversions in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has found federal efforts to protect endangered fish “scientifically justified” but added that problems facing delta smelt and chinook salmon are not entirely caused by thirsty farms south of the estuary.

With release of the study today, the National Academy of Sciences stepped into a battle over a pair of federal biological opinions that limit water for farmers to protect the fish. But what many had hoped would clear up controversy over water restrictions has been greeted as another mixed analysis of the region’s overlapping environmental stressors.

The National Academies’ National Research Council said the diversions ordered under the bi-ops from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are sound, but the timing of methods to protect fish from pumps on the south end of the delta — the water source for many farmers in the San Joaquin Valley — is “less well-supported” by science.  …

“The committee concluded that in winter, high reverse river flows from high levels of pumping probably adversely affect smelt. Therefore, reducing the high reverse flows to decrease mortality of smelt is scientifically justified,” the NAS report says. “However, the data do not permit confident identification of when to limit reverse flows of the rivers or a confident assessment of the benefits fish receive by reducing reverse flows. … As a result, the implementation of this action needs to be accompanied by careful monitoring, adaptive management and additional analyses.”"  “National Academies Deliver Mixed Message on Calif. Delta Dilemma“

“At least 15 U.S. states have sued the Environmental Protection Agency seeking to stop it from issuing rules controlling greenhouse gas emissions until it reexamines whether the pollution harms human health.

Florida, Indiana, South Carolina and at least nine other states filed the petitions in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, states said.

They joined petitions filed last month by Virginia, Texas and Alabama.  …

The state petitions call for the EPA to reopen hearings on the so-called “endangerment finding” the agency issued last year declaring the emissions dangerous to people.

“If EPA doesn’t reopen the hearings we will move forward to try to stop them from regulating greenhouse gases,” said Brian Gottstein, an assistant to Virginia’s Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli.

The states have complained that the EPA relied too heavily from reports by the U.N.’s climate science panel which included information that exaggerated the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

The EPA said it was confident it would withstand legal challenges on the issue. “The question of the science is settled,” spokeswoman Adora Andy said. The science “came from an array of highly respected, peer-reviewed sources from both within the United States and across the globe, and took into consideration hundreds of thousands of comments from members of the public, which were addressed in the finding,” she said.”  “States Sue EPA To Stop Greenhouse Gas Rules“

“This spring, city contractors will fan out across this well-to-do college town to unscrew light bulbs in thousands of homes and replace them with more energy-efficient models, at taxpayer expense.

City officials never dreamed they’d have to play nanny [really?] when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal …

The City Council will soon consider mandating energy-efficiency upgrades to many apartments and businesses. The proposals under review would be among the most aggressive in the nation, requiring up to $4,000 a rental unit in new appliances, windows and other improvements. Owners of commercial property could face far larger tabs.  …

Relying on voluntary action is “slow to show significant results,” the city concluded in a report last fall that called for stepped-up regulation.  …

Jeff Hohensee, a sustainability consultant, … suggests the city measure every home’s carbon footprint and publicize the results.

City officials aren’t willing to go that far. But they are hoping to leverage peer pressure. They plan to post congratulatory signs outside homes that have let the “two techs in a truck” change the light bulbs. They’ll offer prizes to churches and schools that get commitments from, say, 100 families to insulate their attics. They’ll host energy-efficiency block parties and plan to hire a consultant to create a conservation buzz on Facebook and Twitter.  …

Boulder depends almost entirely for energy on a coal-powered plant.”  “Even Boulder Finds It Isn’t Easy Going Green“

“[Sen. Diane] Feinstein [D-CA] has infuriated environmental activists … by drafting federal legislation that would ease Endangered Species Act restrictions to allow more water to be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for growers in the state’s Central Valley.

Drastic cutbacks in irrigation supplies this year alone from both state and federal water projects have idled about 23,000 farm workers and 300,000 acres of cropland, according to University of California at Davis researchers.

“The unemployment rate is 40 percent in some valley towns and people are standing in bread lines,” Feinstein said in a statement released through her office.

“I believe we need a fair compromise that will respect the Endangered Species Act while recognizing the fact that people in California’s breadbasket face complete economic ruin without help,” she added.  …

The senator has not released details of her proposed measure, which may be attached as an amendment to a federal jobs bill. But she said it would grant farmers in the state’s agricultural heartland up to 40 percent of their federal water allocation for two years.  …

Most farmers got just 10 percent of their contracted allocation in 2009 and could get less this year.

The cutbacks were forced by … delta pumping restrictions imposed to protect … smelt populations.”  “Despite Rain, California Still Fighting Over Water“

“Fishermen from around the country are planning to pack the steps in front of the U.S. Capitol this month to demand changes to a federal fisheries law they say is killing jobs and eroding fishing communities.

Organizers of the “United We Fish” rally expect up to 3,000 people at the Feb. 24 protest, including a bipartisan roster of congressmen and fishermen from as far away as Alaska.  …

Jim Hutchinson Jr. of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, a rally organizer, said the overall goal is changing the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the federal fisheries law that was reauthorized in 2007.

Hutchinson said the law sets unrealistic fish stock recovery goals based on flawed science, then mandates harsh cuts for failing to meet the goals.  …

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokeswoman Monica Allen said the agency “will be listening carefully to what fishermen and others have to say that day.”  …

Hutchinson said his New Jersey-based group started organizing the rally after a closure of the amberjack fishery last year followed other closures it viewed as based on bad science, such as on a healthy black sea bass stock.  …

A primary push at the rally will be for flexibility in provisions of the fishery law that tighten rules if depleted stocks aren’t being rebuilt along a 10-year timeline. Fishermen say the 10-year timeline is unscientific and arbitrary and ignores nature’s role in recovery.  …

Amanda Leland of the Environmental Defense Fund said she understands fishermen’s frustrations, adding that recent management has cost fishing jobs.”  “Fishermen say federal law kills jobs“

“And yet, despite all of the above [evidence that polar bears are not endangered], on May 14th 2008 U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, invoking the U.S. Endangered Species Act, proclaimed polar bears as a “threatened species,” in effect threatening more of them with death … (stick with me here.)  …

In 1972 … the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited [polar bear] hunting in Alaska. (And no, it’s not the hunting ban that has caused their increased numbers; they proliferated equally in Canada which continued the polar bear season.)

So after 1972 U.S. hunters started hunting polar bears in Canada. But Kempthorne’s proclamation (upheld by Interior Sec. Salazar in the current administration) means that U.S. hunters will be barred by law from bringing their trophy bear skins into the U.S. …

[Before the proclamation] hunters (primarily from the U.S.) had been paying $30,000 for the chance of whacking a polar bear during a grueling hunt in the Canadian arctic on dog-sleds and in sub-zero weather.  …

Recreational hunters (again, overwhelmingly from the U.S) pumped $3 million a year into Eskimo communities for polar bear hunts. These Inuit communities get a quota of bear tags (licenses) from the Canadian government to use as they see fit. They can hunt the bears themselves for the meat, and for the roughly $1000 per hide if they sell it. Or they can sell the tag to a recreational hunter for $30,000 –serve as his guide, (i.e. he can experience most of their culture’s traditional and integral parts of the hunt) and still keep the meat. Only a federal bureaucrat could miss the implications here.

In fact, these hunts being such an integral part of their culture, a few Inuits elect to retain the tags for themselves to do the killing. The new ruling means that now they’ll probably keep them all. A recreational hunt lasts a few days and—like all hunting–does not always climax with kill. But the tag is considered used once it’s sold to a recreational hunter, kill or no kill. On the other hand, Inuit hunters always kill a bear because they have months to fill that tag. So now that U.S. recreational hunters are barred by U.S. law from bringing home their conversation-piece rug, the Inuits have no choice but to keep their tags, assuring that more polar bears will be killed.”  “Um — about those vanishing polar bears …“